


I Wipe My Brow And I Sweat My Rust

by WitchStuff



Series: It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine) [2]
Category: My Mad Fat Diary
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, Angst, Dark, F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Mucho Angst, Vague references to sexual assault, mention of multiple character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-09
Updated: 2017-07-09
Packaged: 2018-11-29 21:17:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11449218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WitchStuff/pseuds/WitchStuff
Summary: Silence descends upon the room like a fine layer of dust, making every breath a difficulty. Even though she’d just said she won’t, Rae wants to ask. She wants to scream, to grab him and shake him and yell in his face, “But what were you doing there, Finn? What did they do to you? Are you alright?!”An extreme AU where things went horribly wrong after Finn went to Leeds. Apocalyptically wrong.





	I Wipe My Brow And I Sweat My Rust

**Author's Note:**

> Much thanks and love to the bestest beta of all time - @madfatty, and my dear @how-ardently, for the constant encouragement. If I write at all, it’s because of you two.
> 
> Story titles are from lyrics by R.E.M and Imagine Dragons.

It’s a strange old world. Outside, the sun is setting over the broken landscape of a ghost city, rotting slowly into the ground. If there’s a living soul out there right now, it’s only the users and the killers. Man-Eaters who pry in all the abandoned places, looking for the ones still walking, to strip them of everything they have left.

And inside, Rae Earl is being held by Finn Nelson, and somehow that’s stranger and more surreal than any of those other things.  

She tries to just stand there, let him get all he needs from the contact, but she’s aware of how rigid her stance is, how awkward her hand is when it lightly pats his back. He grips harder, unaware of her discomfort. The pressure builds inside, until she's just about ready to shove him away, hard, so that she doesn't feel his too-thin body, smell his earthy, sweaty scent.

"What's going on?" Amy's quiet voice announces her presence, though it doesn't do a thing to shift Finn away from the hug. His body is shaking slightly with his ragged breathing; Rae has the horrible notion that he might be crying. She turns her eyes to her friend, signaling that everything is fine with a small wave of the hand that’s been resting, limp and useless, against her body. Amy stands by the wall and waits, her brow creased. Rae clears her throat.

"Finn?" she says, "We got you something to eat."

His body jerks a bit, then slowly, reluctantly, he detaches from Rae and takes a step back. He’s standing in front of them, looking from one girl to the other. Then he wipes his eyes and looks back at the floor behind him, making sure the little girl is still sleeping. He doesn’t make a move to take the food, just stands there on shaky legs.

“Rae.” Amy says in a low voice, pointing with her chin to the gun at Finn’s feet.

“Yeah, I know. It’s fine.”

“We shouldn't let him - “

“Amy, it’s fine. It’s only Finn.”

Amy’s face looks almost blank, but Rae can recognize the annoyed question in her eyes. “Finn?” Rae says, “Finn Nelson? You know, from college?”

“Finn Nelson?” says Amy in surprise and takes a closer look at the familiar stranger standing in front of her, “No shit.”

“Finn, d’you remember Amy?” Rae cannot believe this. 70% of the human population destroyed, and she still finds herself in some reunion-small-talk nightmare. “From college? Remember, she wanted to punch me that one time?”

“Still do.” says Amy dryly.

Finn says nothing. Amy tries to give him the bread again. He doesn’t make a move to take it. Sneaks another look at the little girl, calculating.

Rae takes the plate from Amy’s hands, shoves it at Finn, who takes it instinctively. "Look, you're no good to her all weak and poorly. Eat."

"We wouldn't offer it if we couldn't spare it, alright?' the redhead assures him.

Slowly, as if in a daze, he lifts the food into his mouth. You would think he would devour it, but he eats like it’s a chore. Like he’s only pushing the bread in for the sake of the girl behind him. At one point Rae thinks he’s about to turn and check on the sleeping form again, but he physically restrains himself from doing it.

Finn continues to chew, slowly, swallowing with difficulty. They just stand there, watching him in silence. Rae notes the long, broken fingernails, black with months-worth of grime, the chapped lips, skin peeling around his mouth. The sunken cheekbones, hollow and dark with old bruises. Beauty is bullshit, she thinks. Underneath the skin we are all skeletons.

When Amy hands him a bottle of water, he drinks half of it in one go, wincing with each swallow. Then he turns back and crouches by the girl, waking her up. She hasn’t stirred through this entire meet-and-greet, but one word from him and she bolts upright. He murmurs something and she relaxes, he holds the bottle to her mouth and she drinks greedily until there’s nothing left. Neither of them seem to mind that the water is a bit smelly and not very clear. She drinks, eyes half closed, and the second she finishes the bottle she’s back to sleep again. Finn’s hand lingers for a second on the crown of her head. _What am I watching?_ Wonders Rae.

He turns back to them, handing Amy the plate and empty plastic bottle. His eyes search out Rae, still intense and brimming with something she can’t handle. What is he seeing when he looks at her? For the first time in forever she gives a thought, a real thought, to what she looks like. Is he taking stock, comparing her with the girl he knew? She doesn’t want to be assessed, doesn’t want to explain or excuse, answer any questions. _Why is her hair so short? How did she get all those muscles? Why are her ankles scared?_ She tries to break the stare but he’s so bloody focused. When he looks at her like that it’s as if he’s still holding her like before, choking her in the vice of his embrace, praying in her ear. _Rae, oh thank God, thank God…_

“Someone hit you.” he says finally.

She moves her fingers under her bruised eye. “Yeah.”

He stares.

“Just one of the perks of the job.” she shrugs, trying for lightness, but getting nothing from him. He stares. She itches. She has to leave.

“You should sleep some more, and tomorrow -”

Finn takes a step forward. “No,” he says, looking dizzy. “Now.”

“Finn, you can barely stand.”

“I’m fine.” his voice is clipped, and it’s like he’s assuring her that he’s endured much worse. Well, whatever. So has she. So has everybody.

“How nice for you. As for me, I’ve had a long day running around risking my life out there, thanks for asking, and my eye’s bloody throbbing, so if you don’t mind, I would like to clean up and rest. Maybe even eat some of this food everyone’s raving about. You can stand here like a fucking scarecrow all night as far as I’m concerned, or you can fuck off back to where you came from, you prick. But I’m gonna go do my own shit, and I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”

Amy makes a noise behind her. Rae’s not sure if it’s a gasp or a laugh or what.

Finn wobbles slightly, then the corners of his mouth twitch.

“Alright, Jesus.” he says “Don’t flip out, Mae.”  

+++

Rae’s dreams that night are filled with hazy summer days. Nothing is clear except the feeling of freedom, the sweet smell of grass, and the tops of trees rushing, rushing above her.

She wakes up with the ghost of a familiar taste in her mouth and so much longing in her body she finds it hard to breathe. Sometimes it goes like this, she wakes up missing everyone, all of them, all the people she had once and had failed to appreciate.

She thinks about Finn while she’s getting dressed in her sensible clothes. Him being here. Him, being. So many nights she cried for him, just for him alone, for finding love and not knowing what to do with it. She would cry for his smile, the smell of his tobacco when he leaned in close to talk to her, the way he wore a jacket, the way his fingers touched the needle as he was putting on a record. Little things, physical things, all gone, all lost to death. She’d think about his body, his freckles and his belly button and his toes, that little scar, all of it decomposing somewhere out there, forgotten and anonymous and just one of millions. And she’d cry and cry.

+++

It doesn’t matter how early she wakes up, the compound is always buzzing with sound and action when she gets there. Early risers rush her, always needing, always wanting. She moves among them, cutting through the current of need like a knife through butter. Gone are the days when she took to heart every little scratch and broken nail. “Don’t talk to me before breakfast.” she tells them all.

She eats with Amy and Louise and Hrishi. They talk about rations and sick people and patrols. Her day takes shape and spreads before her; what she needs to do, who she has to talk to, what is missing. And in the back of her mind she is clearing space for him. Because she knows, their conversation is coming. He won’t wait one more day to ask all his questions. Her eyes keep darting back and forth around the dining hall, looking for them. The way he was last night, he might be stubborn enough to try skipping again, but Rae’s sure he wouldn’t let his girl go without unnecessarily. Yet, so far there’s been no sign of them.

“I talked to John McMillan over at All Saints last night,” Hrishi reports. Rae tries to pull her attention back to the work. “He says the Creepers they had trouble with last month are closing in again. They must have circled back. Rae, didn’t you have a run-in with Pinheads around there?”

“Yeah, not far from there. West side of Scotgate. Do they think they’re setting up shop?”

Hrishi shrugs his shoulders and finishes the water in his cup. “They don’t know, they just keep seeing movement from the steeple. They asked if we’ve seen anything.”

Amy looks at her. “We should check it out. Can’t let those fuckers think they can just move into the neighborhood.”

“Yeah, we’re classy people, us!” says Lou in her cigarette-burnt voice from forty years of smoking Drum rollies.

Rae’s body is restless, full of nervous energy. Someone needs to go out and sneak around, find evidence of a Pinhead headquarters, if it indeed exists. She feels like taking on the recon, just to get away for a while, to postpone the moment she has to meet Finn’s dark, sunken eyes. But she also wants this over with.

She has so much shit to do today, she tells herself. Yet she finds herself walking around the compound, looking.

She stops Mr. Houseman in the hall and asks about the new arrivals. He’s the one whose job it is to find them a proper place and show them around.

“I put them in the small room behind the kitchen. That’s all I can do for now until we move things around a bit.”

“That’s fine.” she nods.

“They seemed to like it, that small room just for themselves.” he touches his mustache for a second, moves closer and says more quietly. “Ms. Earl, you don’t suppose he could be a… you know?”

Not a lot of people call her Ms. Earl. But Mr. Houseman was her Deputy Head in year eleven, and can’t seem to quite let go of the formalities. One time he found her crying after some girls tripped her in gym class, and told her to “Get a move on”. She doesn’t think he remembers that now, though. And they work pretty well together. She shakes her head. “He’s genuine. Don’t worry about it.”

“Are you certain? I mean, how can we - “

“Look, I know him, alright? He’s from here, Stamford born and raised.”

“Really? That’s odd. Where did he go? How did he get back?”

All excellent questions, but they rub Rae the wrong way. She puts her hands on her hips. “Well I haven’t had time to interrogate him yet, Mr. Houseman, but I’ll get right on that.”

He looks affronted and Rae’s first instinct is to apologize and repent, as if she were his student again. But then she remembers that she’s the boss round here, so fuck it. She gives a curt _thanks_ for the info, and makes her way to the room behind the kitchen.

It smells of boiled cabbage in there, and there’s a line of crates full of canned preserves against one wall, but other than that it’s not too bad. Finn is sitting on a narrow cot, the girl sitting on her knees facing him, and he is moving a comb gently through her damp hair. Or, trying to anyway. As Rae walks in, Bella flinches and Finn says, “Sorry. Almost done.”

His eyes fly up to meet Rae’s and they do that thing, that thing he always used to do that was so Finn, that she had forgotten all about. It’s the up-and-down, checking-you-out look boys never did to her except to sneer. Except for Finn. Rae almost lets out a laugh. Fuck if it isn’t really him. She finds that her eyes are doing the same, noting his clean, damp hair pulled back away from his gaunt face. He looks old.

“Morning, boys and girls.” she says cheerfully, and Bella looks back at her, startled. Finn puts his hand on her shoulder.

“It’s okay, love,” he says in his quiet voice. “It’s only Rae.”

Bella looks back at him, and says something only he can hear. Finn whispers something back, and Bella turns to Rae again, her eyes big.

“Hiya!” Rae waves her fingers a little, putting on a smile that she hopes is a non-threatening one. She wishes she knew how to interact with little girls more. “I’m Rae, Finn’s friend. You’re Bella, right?”

The girl just stares.

Oh…. kay. Obviously the kid's gonna be a tough nut to crack. Better move on. She looks back at Finn. His familiar fingers are still working, pushing the comb through Bella’s thick curls with one hand, smoothing it down with the other. Should she tell him it’s not the kind of hair you comb? By now the girl’s hair is a cloud of black frizzy curls around her head. “We should talk, yeah?”

He looks at Bella, fluffing her hair with his fingers and smiling down at her. “There, all done.” he says.

“Does it look pretty?” the girl’s sweet voice rises, steady and strong, surprising the hell out of Rae.

“You look like a black dandelion.” he tells her and wiggles his fingers against her sides. Bella squeals and contorts her body to avoid his tickling. He kisses her forehead and stands up.

“What do kids do here?” he asks. “Is there someplace safe she can wait while we talk? I’m not leaving her alone in this room, anyone can come right in.”

It’s true that the room has no door. Some of them don’t. The tenants usually put a blanket across the threshold or something, but this room is used for storage more than anything, so no one cares about privacy.

“There’s a lady that runs a sort of kindergarten. There are a few children and they sing and play, sound good?”

 

Rae speaks directly to Bella, now that she knows the girl isn’t mute or something, and yet, Bella turns to Finn to ask, a worried tone to her voice, “With all them kids?”

“It may be too much for starters.” Finn looks at Rae.

“Well... they have some books there, if you’re into reading or you can wait in my office, as long as you promise not to bother Amy. You know, like talk her ear off.” she winks at the girl. Nothing.

“Your office?” Finn asks as he picks up his bag and they start making their way through the corridors.

“Yeah. Just this once though.”

“Why d’you have an office, I mean?”

She looks over her shoulder at him and smiles broadly. “’Cause I’m the bleeding boss.”

+++

After they leave Bella with Amy - Amy looking at her as if she’s just been handed a swamp dragon and been asked to care for it for the afternoon - they go to Rae’s room.

She tries not to think about the fact that she took him straight to her most private place, where her bed is, where her knickers are folded in a chest of drawers, and her music is piled up neatly by the bed, in case she ever gets her hands on something to play it on.

It’s just ‘cause it’s private, and they are about to have a very private conversation. And the office is occupied. It just makes sense.

He walks in and looks around.

It feels weird.

Rae watches Finn as he inhales deeply.

“What?” she asks, eyebrows creasing.

He doesn’t answer, makes a beeline for the pile of CD’s, jewel cases mostly broken, some paper booklets singed at the edges from various fires. His fingers touch the top one reverently, and he picks it up. It’s The Stone Roses. Of course it is. “It’s so good -” he starts and his voice breaks, so he starts again. “good to know that whatever happens to the world, there’s still one corner of it that is all Rae.”

Her frown deepens.

He shakes his head, still looking at the CD in his hand, like he’s going over the Sale bin at Town Records. “It even smells like you here. Amazing.” His head rises and he looks at her and then he smiles.

It’s not his full-on, cheeky boy smile, or even his shy, being-sweet-but-secretly-wants-to-jump-her-bones smile. It doesn’t split his face, his mouth doesn’t even go much further than turning up at the corners, and yet it steals Rae’s breath for a moment, the eye contact too much to endure, but it feels like a full minute before she can break away. She turns and sits in the only chair in the room, leaving him with the bed, which is significantly lower, as an option. It's dumb, but she needs to feel in charge.

The chair is a plush, red, modern-style monstrosity that she pulled out of one of the poshest places she’s ever picked. It was the only frivolous thing she ever took back to the compound. It’s ugly and too big for her small room and frankly is kinda ridiculous in her now Spartan life, but Rae had wanted it. She’d seen it standing, unharmed and complete, in the middle of a thoroughly trashed and ruined room, and she’d wanted it.

Finn seems unaware of her emotional struggle. He takes the bed and she hears a small sigh escape him when his body is able to rest. Again, he looks old to her, and she wonders what exactly he’s been doing all this time. So, even though she meant to wait until he starts asking, she finds herself asking first.

“So what have you been up to for the past three years, Finn Nelson? Other than becoming a doting father?”

He blinks and looks startled, but then he leans back on his elbows and starts talking.

 

He’d been in Leeds when the outbreak happened. The men working for his uncle had started taking more and more sick days, until eventually they just didn’t show up for their shifts at all. It took a long while to figure out that this was happening all over.

 

There was so little information coming in. The reporters on telly and in all the newspapers were still talking about a nation-wide pandemic, when everyone on the internet forums were posting about people dying all over the world, not just in the UK. It felt like they’d always been one step behind. They were still treating Uncle Jon’s pneumonia with standard medicine when more and more people started dying around them, and by the time Finn’s uncle started vomiting blood, there were no hospitals that could take him.

Finn’s voice is steady as he talks, despite the rasp around the edges. His eyes dart around the room, and he never looks at Rae as he goes on and on about those early days.

She wishes she could hurry him along. She fucking hates these origin stories. Everyone has them and everyone’s just dying to share them with every other person they meet. And as far as Rae could tell, it was all the same bloody story anyway. And yet every new conversation was always; _Where were you when the outbreak broke? How long before you figured it out? And by all means, total stranger, do list all your dead loved ones in order of ascending gruesomeness of death._ She just couldn’t fucking take it.

It's even worse when it's Finn, because she finds it so hard to really concentrate on anything he says past the first few words. It's the Leeds thing. Of course it is. Bloody Leeds. It was right there between them in the middle of the room, like a bear-trap hidden in plain sight.

Not really hidden at all.

He’d been in Leeds when it started, when he should have been in Stamford with the rest of them, but he’d run away from the sight of her and while he was away, everyone he knew died. Because of one foolish moment where she could have, should have, told him to stay, but didn’t.

“Did you really walk here all the way from up north?” she cuts him off. He’s not even in the beginning of his gruesome-deaths-I’ve-witnessed-in-my-travels list, but she really, she can’t, she just has to move things along.

He's surprised at her question, but then he nods. “I had to go in a pretty wide circle, all the way west to Blackpool, then Liverpool."

Rae blinks. "You're joking."

"Everything from Sheffield and eastward was blocked by military barricade when I started. Don't know what's going on there now, but there were soldiers and tanks, everything. Fucking terrifying it was. So I figured I'd go around it, but -" and here Finn stops for a few long seconds where he just stares into the middle distance. She doesn't know whether he’s lost it, or just trying to figure out what he wants to tell her. Eventually he takes a shaky breath and rubs his face with both palms, and continues, "but, then as it turns out, that was a huge mistake, because Manchester and all around there is pretty much Pinhead territory now, so… and after that, we had to go even further west, walk along the coast and get to Lincolnshire from Leicester.“

”Jesus. On foot?”

“Some of the way in the beginning, but yeah, for the past six months or so, a-after Manchester, yeah. There are less and less usable cars out there. Pinheads use them for raids and when the petrol’s all gone they crash them, for fun. Just couldn’t find a vehicle with petrol in, that wasn’t already claimed.”

“You could’ve just stolen something. You don’t have to be polite to Pinheads, Finn.” The smile she gives him comes out more sarcastic than she planned, and she wants to kick herself. It's like she’s forgotten how to do gracious, or even just plain nice. She's in constant bitch mode, and she suddenly realizes she doesn't like it.

 

It's even worse when Finn looks back at her, his eyes hard. “I had Bells with me, I couldn’t risk it. If I brassed-off the wrong fuckhead out there…” he shakes his head resolutely. “Maybe before, but not after we got out.”

Rae takes a breath and tries to tread carefully. “She was… in a, you know. A… House?”

Finn sighs and nods, but it’s barely even a gesture. “I can’t talk about it.”

“That bad?” she whispers. She knows what goes on in those fucking Shepard Houses, she heard enough rumors and even if only half of it's true… she doesn’t want to imagine.

“I can’t, Rae. Don’t ask me.”

“Okay.”

Silence descends upon the room like a fine layer of dust, making every breath a difficulty. Even though she’d just said she won’t, Rae wants to ask. She wants to scream, to grab him and shake him and yell in his face, “But what were _you_ doing there, Finn? What did they do to you? _Are you alright?!”_

She doesn’t want to listen to his story anymore. Her head is full to bursting with all the new information. She tries to figure out the exact right thing to say to end the conversation without seeming a total coward, which is what she is. “Okay, well -” she starts.

“So who else is here?”

Rae blinks. “Erm… well… there are about one hundred and twenty people living here, but people come and go all the time, so those numbers are kinda fluid -”

“No, I mean, which of us.”

She stares at him. _What is he on about?_ “I - how d’you mean?”

“People I know, the gang. Who else is here?”

“No - no one.”

“My dad?”

“What?” she sounds scared even to her own ears.

“Last time I spoke to him, before the grid fell, he rang to see if I was sick, and he was barely coughing then. I didn’t tell him Uncle Jon’s dead. I couldn’t. I figured… I figured I’d tell him when I see him.” Finn leans forward, his forearms on his knees and his heels bouncing with pent-up energy. “He begged me not to come back to Stamford, to just wait there till it all blew over, and I listened to him and everything got shitty.” his breath is ragged and his eyes fill with tears but he’s not letting them fall. “I know you know where he is, Rae. Is he here with you, or somewhere in town? Back at the house?”

“The House?” she repeats, dumbly, confused. Finn shakes his head.

“Our house, our place. Is he still living back at ours?”

“I’m… Finn, I don’t know what you mean -”

He stands up, wobbling slightly, rubbing his eyes like a tired child. "I just want to see my dad. It's been years, I know he must think I'm dead."

There's ice running down Rae's back and she tries to think clearly, contain the situation. "Okay, look, you're really tired and confused, Finn."

He tilts his head like a small bird. "I'm not confused."

"I don't understand what you're asking."

"I'm being really clear, Rae. Where's my dad? How do I get in touch with him? What's difficult, for fuck's sake?“

Finn advances towards her, closing the small distance between the bed and her stupid red chair, towering over her. All of a sudden he looks wired, not so tired anymore. "My dad, Rae. My father. Gary Winston Nelson. Where is he, where can I find him?”

“I don’t know.” she lies. And he can tell. His face changes.

“Lost touch, have you?" He leans towards her, hands on either side of her, on the arms of her chair, blatantly invading her space. "Or I guess you just don’t give a shit about him neither?” he raises his voice and he never raised his voice to her like this and he feels like a Finn she doesn't know at all.

“That’s not fair.” she gets up and tries to put some distance between them, pushing past him  but he's close and all that happens is that she is now pinned by him with her back against the wardrobe door. “Stop it, Finn.”

“Tell me where my dad is, Rae!” he yells in her face. “I walked across England for two bloody years and spent months in a fucking House to get back to him, so you tell me where I can find him!”

“You know where he is!”

“Tell me!” Finn’s hand slams on the wardrobe door next to her head. Rae jumps.

“Please.” she says quietly, her eyes downcast. “Don’t make me say it.”

“Say it.”

She looks up at him, suddenly angry. Why is she even trying to spare him? What has he done to deserve her sympathy anyway? He’s practically threatening her, and she’s the boss! She brings both her palms to his chest and pushes him away, hard.

 

“Well, he’s dead, isn’t he?” she screams in Finn's face. “Just like the lot of them. Have you been looking around? Everyone’s fucking dead and Gary Nelson isn’t that special! He got sick and he died, just like my mum. Just like my baby sister!" She pushes him another step backwards. "Did you even know I had a sister? Ten days old she was, the most perfect little thing you’ve ever seen, and she'd died. And so did your dad. I’d take you to his grave but it’s just a large pit where towards the end the military fuckheads threw all the bodies and covered them up -”

"Shut up! No!" he shakes his head and turns his face away. "He's not, he can't be..."

A cruel laugh escapes her lips, "'Course he is. No one's left! No one was left except for good ol' Rae. I was the one who had to go around town and look for the people I cared about, make sure they were even buried properly. Some I found, some I didn’t, but either way, I assume everyone I know is dead. And I'm okay, I'm fine, 'cause I can take everything, me. I’ve gathered up who's left, I’ve found this place... I’m the one who has to take care of all of them and just go on as if that's life now. Because _that is_ my life now!" she spreads her arms as if to show him, laughing another bitter laugh. "Bloody _Amy Malone_ is the closest person I have!"

She should take pity on him, he’s in pieces in front of her, shivering in place, with his fists clenched and his tears streaming freely down his ashen face, but right now she just doesn't have it in her. "And then YOU show up like a fucking ghost, coming at me like I fucking owe you something -"

 

"But you do owe me!" he whips his face towards her. "You fucking owe me Rae, it's all your fault!"

 

"Well, gee, Finn, as amazing as I am, I didn't bring on the end of days."

 

"Don't... pretend... you don't know what I -" he wipes the tears crudely with the back of his hand, breathing hard, but so is she. "I went to Leeds, the whole reason I even went... I could have been here but Rae bloody Earl couldn't bring herself to say, to tell me to stay -"

 

"Don't put that on me, that was your decision."

 

"I should have been here! I asked you... I asked you, Rae!"

 

She wants to yell that he shouldn't have, that he was barking up the wrong tree, that if he was looking for someone to tell him to stay, she was the wrong girl to ask. But she didn't want to lie.

 

"My dad died alone..." he starts, but then his voice wobbles and his body trembles. The fight goes out of him and he stumbles backwards towards her bed and collapses next to it on the floor, just a pile of shaking limbs, too thin and frail in his too-big clothes. Rae doesn’t care. She takes a step towards him and shouts over his sobs.

 

“Oh, what did you think, that you’d walk back into town three years later and find us all just sitting at the chippy, the whole gang just having a laugh, waiting for you? You’re a fucking child.” Her hand goes to her chest and she continues to yell at his broken form. “You had it easy, mate. I lost everything! One by one I had to watch them wasting away. My mum and my sister, they didn’t even have time to get sick, they just died in intensive care when the grid fell and there was nothing anyone could do for them when the machines stopped working. Did they deserve it more than Gary? My mum should have died instead of him, because I didn’t tell you to stay? He was… such a good guy, one of the best really… but that didn’t matter in the end…” 

 

Finn lets out a cry of pure grief and Rae can finally, finally, just shut her mouth. 

 

For a long time she just stands there, watching him shiver and sob on the floor of her room. Minutes go by, maybe days. She thinks she should do something, put an arm around him, on him.

_There, there._

But is she still supposed to do that if she’s the one who caused his pain? 

 

Eventually she sits, gingerly and carefully by his side, and leans her back on the side of the bed, sighing. "He wasn't alone. I was with him." she sniffs. "Held him in my arms and sang Sultans of Swing. He... asked about you and I lied and told him you were right there by his side. He couldn't tell by the end anyway and it made him happy." her voice almost fades out. "I'm sorry."

 

She waits silently while he cries, for long horrific minutes, until his body stops shivering and convulsing, until his sobs become less violent. Did he really just realize for the first time that Gary is dead? She thinks. Did he honestly never entertain the thought before? She supposes that's what it took for him to keep going. For three years, he was on a mission; he was getting here.

 

There are noises from outside, people walking past, stopping by her door. Someone's asking if she's in there. Someone else is relating her orders not to disturb. They walk away. She and Finn are still just sitting in silence.

 

She hands him a tissue and he blows his nose, but when he eventually speaks his voice still sounds thick with tears. 

“What happened to the rest of us.” he says it flatly, not in the form of a question. Rae inhales.

_Oh, fuck._

She thought she was prepared for this, but she so isn’t. She’s going to have to go through the list. Her own origin story.

  

She wants to ask him if he’s sure he wants to hear it, so soon after learning about his dad, but of course he does. If she were in his position she wouldn’t have let it go until he went through the entire god-damned list. So she does.

  

“I don’t know what actually happened to Chloe or Izzy.” she says, getting that out of the way. “One night Chloe called me all hysterical, yelling and making no sense. They were together but that’s all I got. The call got disconnected. I never… I couldn’t find out what happened to them. Their families are dead.”

  

“Archie.” Finn croaks. “Archie.”

 

For some reason, this is the moment Rae’s heart breaks. Tears flood her eyes so suddenly, she is having a hard time keeping her voice steady. “They got out of town really early. His dad… people said he was paranoid but I think he was one of the first people to really get what was happening. He got himself a gun and a van, packed up the entire family and they were off, no goodbye, no nothing. I was in the hospital with my mum but Archie left me a note on the door at home. That’s… that’s the last thing… I heard from them."

 

“So maybe they’re okay.” Finn is holding his face up with both hands, leaning his elbows on his pulled-up knees. His voice is muffled by his palms but he doesn’t care apparently.

  

They both know it’s a dumb thing to say. There was no place to hide, nowhere far enough to run from a disease like that. Besides…

 

“They were all already sick by then.” she says quietly.

 

He sighs. “Do I want to know about Chop?”

 

Rae sniffs in an attempt to get her voice under control. “Oh, Chop is a really good story, actually.”

  

He looks at her, his tearful eyes so full of hope. “Happy ending?” 

 

“Oh. Well, no. But the story is great.” 

 

Finn waves her wearily to go on. 

 

“Well, our Chopper is a bit of a legend ‘round here. Ask any kid in the compound, they’ll tell you all about him. He turned all warrior guy when, you know, the shit hit the fan. Used to go into houses all over the city, check for dead people, get the corpses out and destroyed them so that they didn’t just rot in their beds. Then he organized teams of people, figured out the best ways to go, all methodical like, from area to area, and get the most useful stuff out. He taught me how to do it.” When her voice wobbles again, Finn’s head turns towards her. But she is staring at her fingernails, can’t look up. “Taught me everything, our Chop did. We… built this entire place together, in the beginning.”

 

 

It’s hard, suddenly, to talk about Chop. Maybe because Finn knows him like she does, knows him from before. Knows Chop the lad, all fun and games and sexy parties. The way he was last time Finn saw him, silly and light hearted and happy-go-lucky Chop. Finn never saw the hardness in Chop’s blue eyes, the bitterness in his smile. And Rae wishes she never got to know those things herself. She takes a deep breath, shakes her head a bit. That’s not all Chop was, she reminds herself, even after. “The kids loved him,” she says. “They used to run to him when he got back, climb all over him, and he’d let them. And tell them wild stories about his adventures…”

 

 

She stops again, not even sure why. Finn just sits beside her and waits in silence. After a while, a long while, he raises one hand and moves his fingers through his hair, now mostly dry. When he asks his question, his voice is also mostly dry. “What happened to him?”

 

 

Rae pulls her legs up to her chest and hugs them to her. She focuses on the cuff of her sleeve now, pulling her fingers in, like she used to do when she was young. “There was this… group of people, scientists, they stayed with us a couple of nights. There were on their way to London. Did you hear the rumours about a vaccine?”

 

This time when he looks at her, she looks back. This is more important than their drama. 

 

“A vaccine? What for? Isn’t it over? I thought it was all over. The people who died, died and the rest of us didn’t -” 

 

“Yeah, but some of us turned Pinheads and they’re making it impossible for the rest of us to rebuild, or start a government, or do anything normal.” 

 

Finn turns his entire body to her. “Is there supposed to be a connection between the outbreak and the Pinheads? I never heard that! Everyone thinks they’re just, like…”

 

“Nutcases?” 

 

“Yeah, exactly! Like the fucking Shepherds, they’re just using the state of the world to take whatever they want like, and they don’t give a shit about anyone. They’re like a gang, or a cult, of all the fucked up dickheads who made it -”

 

 

“That’s what we all figured as well, but them scientists, yeah? They said that the Pinheads are people reacting to the virus differently, it changed the chemicals in their brains. And they put all those metal and pins and stuff in their skulls, not because it’s a gang thing, but because it’s a chemical necessity they have. They don’t even know why they need to, but they do. And all their aggression comes up to the surface - “ 

 

“What, like people with brain tumours sometimes do?” 

 

“Yeah, like that.” 

 

He looks at her, his eyes wide and kinda wild, and his mouth slightly open in a question he hasn’t thought of yet. 

 

“That’s… so… fucked up,” he says finally, his gaze darting around. “I can’t even wrap my head - “ His eyes focus back on her. “What does it have to do with Chop, though?” 

 

“Oh! Well, they were going to London to test something, in some big lab, I don’t know. And Chop said they’d never make it there, not on their own. It was a miracle they made it this far, he said. So he had to take them. And I told him not to, we needed him, he belonged here. But he was so fucking stubborn when it came to stuff like this. His eyes were lit up and he was all like -  _that’s the only way, we have to fix them, not fight them until they kill us all! -_ So… he went.”

  

She takes in a shaky breath, feeling choked. She’s not sure how this happened, but suddenly she’s sitting very close to Finn, them facing each other, legs folded, knees practically touching.

  

“That was eight months ago. I haven’t heard from him since.” her quiet words hover in the space between them, harsh and final. “I assume he’s dead.”

 

 Finn’s mouth trembles at that. Rae knows this because she’s finding it hard to look away from it. “I assume they’re all dead.” she whispers.

  

His fingers shake, make the slightest movement, maybe toward hers. “Rae -” 

 

“Rae?” There’s a knock on the door. 

 

She blinks, her eyes still on him, and clears her throat. “What?” 

 

“Are you coming? They need you downstairs.” 

 

“Not yet.” 

 

The messenger hesitates behind the door. “Sorry, but… Amy said to tell you to… I’m sorry, this is Amy not me, okay?” 

 

“What?”

 

“To stop making out with your ex and just come downstairs.”

 

Rae doesn’t move and she thinks Finn has frozen too. What they’re doing is so far from a welcome-home shag it’s not even funny. 

 

“Tell her to go fuck herself. Tell her I said to tell her. Now, no one fucking disturbs me again or I won’t come down at all. Got it?” 

 

“Yes ma’am. Rae. Bye.”  
  


 

“You really run a tight ship around here.” he says after a long while.  
  


 

“I reign through fear.”  
  


 

“You were always pretty scary.”  
  


 

She doesn’t know what to say.  
  


 

“I loved that about you. It was a real turn on when you got all huffy.”

 

A shiver runs down Rae’s back. How did the conversation just turn to sex? What is she supposed to say to that? A few moments ago he was screaming at her, then crying like a lost child on the floor of her bedroom. Now they’re supposed to ignore all that and reminisce about their brief relationship? 

 

She needn’t have worried. Finn pulls his legs up and breaks the spell they’re under. “Thank you for taking care of my dad when he… on the last day.” he mumbles. 

 

Her throat is closing but she manages a weird-sounding “’Course.” 

 

He gets up, and slowly walks out of the room. 

 

After a long while, Rae gets up and locks the door after him. She lies down on her bed and falls asleep, ignoring the knocks on the door and Amy’s curses from outside. 

 

She sleeps for four straight hours and doesn’t dream.

 

 

THE END   
(probably)


End file.
